June 2016 Archives

German soldiers in foxholes with panzerfausts within arm’s reach for immediate use await the onslaught of Soviet armor and infantry.

WWII History

Savage Fight for Seelow

By Victor Kamenir

For Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union, the capture of Berlin was of great political and symbolic importance. Read more

A Federal battery fords a tributary of the Rappahannock on the day of battle. At the outset of the campaign, Jackson hoped to defeat the newly established Federal Army of Virginia one corps at a time.

WWII History

Bloody Collision at Cedar Mountain

By David A. Norris

In the shadow of Cedar Mountain on the southern outskirts of Culpeper, Virginia, Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson deployed the troops at the head of his column of march against a reinforced Union corps on August 9, 1862. Read more

WWII History

Daring Strike on Havana

By Mike Phifer

The guns of the British warships assaulting the Cuban shoreline just east of Havana on the morning of June 7, 1762, roared to life in a flash of orange flames and grey smoke. Read more

WWII History

Bloody Repulse at Fontenoy

By Robert L. Durham

The French cavalry thundered ahead, straight for the British open square. The red-coated infantry made ready for them, the front-rank knelt with muskets planted in the ground and their fixed bayonets pointed outward. Read more

British infantry prepares to assault German positions on Menin Road Ridge. The British squandered valuable time preparing for the Passchendaele offensive, giving the Germans ample time to improve their defenses.

WWII History

Hard-Won Victory at Passchendaele

By Mike Phifer

British soldiers fixed their bayonets and waited tensely in the trenches for the order to go over the top. Read more

WWII History

Royalist Reckoning at Naseby

By Joshua Shepherd

Late on the evening of June 13, 1645, King Charles I convened a hurried council with senior officers of the Royalist army at the village of Market Harborough in England’s East Midlands. Read more

Pope Eugenius III presents his pilgrim staff to King Louis VII at the Church of St. Denis. A high-ranking knight holds the Oriflamme, which was the battle standard of French kings.

WWII History

Crusader Calamity at Damascus

By William E. Welsh

The hot sun beat down on the mud-brick and wooden buildings, the lush orchards, and the patchwork of pastoral fields around the oval-shaped, walled city of Damascus in southern Syria on the morning of July 24, 1148. Read more

Officers of the 10th Maine Regiment photographed a few days after the battle at the location where the regiment made its stand. Jackson’s old division held the ground behind them in the distance.

WWII History, Editorial

A Confederate Private’s Eyewitness Account of the Battle of Cedar Mountain

It is a given that troops who are successful in battle are those that have confidence in themselves and in their commanders, and this was the case with the Confederate soldiers serving under Maj. Read more

The Gettysburg cyclorama shows a badly wounded Alonzo Cushing commanding one of his guns in The Angle.

WWII History, Valor

Union Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing

By William E. Welsh

One of the smoothbore cannons in Captain Merritt B. Miller’s Third Company of the Washington Artillery deployed west of Emmitsburg Road just south of the town of Gettysburg fired a single round at 1:07 p.m. Read more

The crew of a British Sopwith Camel flying at 10,000 feet downs the first Gotha on British soil during a night raid on London in January 1918. Germany reinvigorated its strategic bombing campaign late in the war by using Gotha aircraft instead of zeppelins.

WWII History, Weapons

Germany’s Gotha Heavy Bombers

By Eric Niderost

It was the early-morning hours of June 13, 1917, when a group of German aircraft began its final preparations for a very special mission, which amounted to the first fixed-wing bombing of London. Read more

WWII History, Uniform

British Paratrooper, 1st Airborne Division, Arnhem 1944

By William E. Welsh, Illustration by Johnny Shumate

The British Air Ministry established the British Airborne forces on June 22, 1940, at the request of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more

Croatian nobleman Nikola Zrinski leads a sortie against the Turks at the Hungarian fortress of Szigetvar in 1566. The bloody siege was Suleiman’s last battle.

WWII History, Soldiers

Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I

By William E. Welsh

Venetian military engineer Gabriel Tandini listened intently in the semi-darkness of the Knights Hospitaller counter-tunnels beneath the walls of Rhodes for sound of Turkish sappers trying to dig under the city’s walls. Read more

Israeli tanks advance on the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War of 1967. The conflict is one of many covered in a new work on armored clashes in the Cold War.

WWII History, Books

Tanks continued to play a central role in regional conflicts that sprang up around the globe in the post-Vietnam era.

By Christopher Miskimon

The Six-Day War began on June 5, 1967, with a lightning assault by Israeli armored units and aircraft. Read more

WWII History, Games

Broken Arrow Preview

By Joseph Luster

In the world of strategy games, there are those geared more toward casual play and those for long-time tactical players with a keen eye for complexity. Read more

WWII History, Games

Expeditions: Rome

By Joseph Luster

It’s time to explore a very different era of history, because THQ Nordic and developer Logic Artists recently unleashed another in-depth historical strategy outing in the form of Expeditions: Rome. Read more

June 2016

From Around the Network

The Tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Battle of Cunaxa and the March of the 10,000

Medieval Knights: Arms and Armor at Northallerton

The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity